Inside [Paradise], Sylveon's magical power was being replenished at every moment.
Yet the mana drained by the Moonlight Skirt alone was enough to cancel out [Paradise]'s recharge — proof that Armed cards truly did consume an enormous amount of magical power.
Dark's original concept had been to use [Paradise]'s mana recovery to let his Magic Guide Spirits sustain Armed cards over long periods. But as things stood now, [Paradise] at version 1.0 simply wasn't sufficient to support their use of Armed cards.
Perhaps once the version was upgraded and more Magic Guide Spirits were registered, [Paradise]'s mana recovery rate might climb high enough to keep pace with the drain. But that remained a possibility confined to theory.
"Not exactly promising..."
His Magic Guide Spirits possessed the high intelligence needed to "properly draw out the true power of Armed cards." And yet they were still hitting a wall at the mana stage.
In the current situation, even if he successfully forged a usable Armed card, it could only be deployed in short bursts. Still — there was plenty of time ahead. He'd find a way eventually.
...
Dark turned his mind to the question of why the Moonlight Skirt had managed to achieve a breakthrough in Armed synthesis.
"On the surface, the finer carving and the paint applied afterward seem like the reason the Moonlight Skirt succeeded."
"But what's actually behind that?"
A sharp person is often one who thinks deeply and notices things others miss. Dark didn't consider himself particularly sharp, but he did think of himself as someone who at least knew how to reflect. The ability to quiet your mind and think — that was a talent in its own right. Perhaps painstaking work like woodcarving really was well-suited to him.
And after turning the question over carefully, he found it: the difference between how he'd carved the Moonlight Skirt and how he'd carved the Wooden Armor.
When carving the Wooden Armor, he'd been going through the motions — telling himself it was good enough, close enough, fine as-is.
When carving the Moonlight Skirt, the final product wasn't anything particularly refined either, but he'd carved it with a clear purpose in mind. He'd wanted to give it to Sylveon. He'd put in the effort to make it right for her.
In other words — he'd put his heart into it.
...
A more refined shape, versus a more heartfelt investment. Which factor weighed more heavily?
Placed within the rules of this world, it actually wasn't that hard to guess.
"Mind, mana, armament — a trinity as one."
"I see. The 'mind' here doesn't refer solely to the Mental Furnace."
"You carve with your mind, and only then do you carve something truly worthy."
"It's the same principle as the pursuit of art."
"Perhaps going forward, I should choose subjects I actually care about as my carving targets."
"Like holy armors, Major Sin armaments, Digimon armor evolutions..."
"Speaking of Digimon armor — Gatomon should be able to use the Armor of Light to evolve into Nefertimon."
"But how would you even make something like that?"
Dark shook his head. Ideals and reality really did have a gap between them.
For the time being, he should stick to picking things that were simple and feasible. Perhaps making one suitable Armed piece for each of his Magic Guide Spirits was a good starting point — building proficiency steadily, layer by layer, until he'd accumulated enough to attempt more complex operations.
Like placing materials other than his own handcrafted armaments inside the Mental Furnace. Relying purely on self-made carvings for smelting clearly had its limits. Adding extra materials could grant an armament more effects and capabilities.
And going a step further... perhaps once this semester ended, he could go home and consult the developer of the [Tri-Armed Transmutation Circle] directly.
That was an advantage he'd been born into. There was no way he was leaving it on the table.
...
Tuesday evening.
Dark returned to the dormitory earlier than the night before. Under the expectant gazes of his Magic Guide Spirits, he sat down to carve — but first, he gave them an assignment: write a proper description of a favorite outfit, in no fewer than two hundred characters.
For any child who'd learned their letters, a short essay like that would have been trivially easy. For the Magic Guide Spirits, however, it was a catastrophe.
Only Gatomon, who read picture books regularly, could finish it without any trouble.
Two hundred characters — and it took the entire group a full hour before every last assignment had been handed in.
Trash Slime's essay had been ghostwritten by Ditto.
Meowth, having had so little study time, was mercifully excused from the assignment — though Dark still had him write down what he liked on a slip of paper.
By the time Dark had collected everything, he had a rough picture of each Magic Guide Spirit's taste in clothing.
He graded each assignment in turn, then announced that he would begin crafting in order from the highest score down.
This whole operation left the innocent, guileless Magic Guide Spirits absolutely flabbergasted — and for the first time, every one of them truly grasped the importance of "grades" and "scores."
And naturally, the only one to receive a perfect score of 100 was Gatomon.
When she got her assignment back, Gatomon stared at the bright red 100 written on the page, her big round eyes curving into little crescents.
She had written about a hat.
"Are you kidding me!"
DemiDevimon was speechless for a long moment after learning what Gatomon had asked for.
Because for its own part — it had also asked for a hat.
Yes: DemiDevimon was now planning to ask for a second hat, purely to increase its own standing. As the saying goes, a mountain's worth isn't in its height but in its spirits — and one more hat meant one more rank.
...
With the target confirmed, Dark set to carving that evening's armament.
The hat Gatomon had in mind was white and fluffy — a top hat, with two differently colored feathers pinned to one side.
It was a technically demanding piece to carve, but now that Dark had a handle on the fundamentals, it was simply a matter of spending more time on the fine details.
Since it was a hat meant as a gift for Gatomon, the affection he felt for her was poured into every stroke of the carving.
The finished piece wasn't dramatically different from yesterday's skirt, but Dark felt, somehow, that this hat had turned out better.
Once the carving was done, he began painting slowly and carefully. Before long, a pristine white top hat had come out of the process.
After a brief rest, Dark launched straight into that evening's Armed synthesis without delay.
The overall steps were no different from the previous two nights — with one exception: when filling the Mental Furnace, he used [Pride] rather than [Lust].
As he channeled mana into the smelting, he also noticed that his control over mana was gradually improving. By the end, he'd only needed to drink one small vial of Mana Recovery Potion to complete the smelt.
Throughout the whole process, Gatomon stood nearby holding the Mana Recovery Potion, her face an expressionless mask — though it was obvious, even so, how much she cared about this hat.
Dark was fully focused on maintaining his mana output, just about to begin the finishing pass, when a paw suddenly appeared right beneath his eyes.
Meowth, who had crept up without a sound, hurled a wooden bighead carp carving straight into the Mental Furnace.
"Meow!"
In an instant — before Dark even had time to react — Gatomon let out a piercing shriek and turned on Meowth with a glare like a demon unleashed.
The dormitory, previously peaceful enough, erupted into absolute chaos in the blink of an eye.
"Meow meow meow!"
But Meowth, who had just committed the crime, scrambled up the bookshelf in two or three quick moves and sat there flicking its tail without a care in the world.
Gatomon's fury boiled over. Her right cat-paw snapped out, and her normally composed mouth split open to bare startlingly sharp fangs.
If Dark hadn't pressed his hand down on the top of her head in time, that [Cat Punch] would have already been flying.
Meowth, having narrowly escaped with its life, seemed completely unaware of its brush with death. It just stared wide-eyed at the Mental Furnace, its expression one of undisguised excitement.
It had obviously been plotting this for a long time. That sneak-fish-toss was no impulse decision.
The fact that Dark had placed Meowth's armament last on the list had probably been one of the reasons it had done this.
At the workbench, Dark barely had time to pat Gatomon once before turning his full attention back to the transmutation circle.
The wooden bighead carp Meowth had suddenly thrown in was causing serious problems with the smelt, which had been in its finishing stages.
To stabilize the transmutation circle, Dark urgently poured in more mana — but the Mental Furnace was already showing signs of instability.
In the scramble, he had no time to think. He reached into the thought-bottle, dabbed the tiniest drop of [Pride], and dripped it into the Mental Furnace.
Fortunately, with that infusion of [Pride], the Mental Furnace stabilized once more.
Dark let out a quiet breath of relief and turned his focus entirely to smelting the wooden fish.
But his heart remained on edge.
Tri-Armed synthesis required armaments crafted by the mage's own hand — and that wooden fish was Meowth's work. This was, at its root, a violation of the theoretical basis of Tri-Armed synthesis.
But if it succeeded anyway... that would open up a whole new line of thinking.
In that moment, Dark suddenly caught hold of the elusive spark of inspiration he'd been unable to pin down before. So he poured in even more of himself.
...
More than ten minutes later.
Dark stared at the Armed card lying quietly on the table, and couldn't quite suppress the excitement rising inside him.
It had worked. This Armed card had actually come out successful.
"As I thought — in Magic Guide theory, a Magic Guide Spirit is considered part of the mage. Not an independent entity."
"It's the same principle as the [Blink Spell]."
"The [Blink Spell] is theoretically a spell that only works on the caster — yet in practice it can be used on Magic Guide Spirits forged from the mage's own mana."
"Tri-Armed synthesis appears to operate on the same logic."
"The carving Meowth made is equivalent to a carving made from my mana — which means it counts as something I made."
"What a wonderful surprise."
Dark's excitement grew the more he thought about it.
Meowth, with its Technician ability, had a carving talent that far surpassed his own.
He could produce simple wooden carvings for synthesis experiments right now, but what he truly envisioned was nothing so simple. Holy armors, Gundams, Kamen Riders — things like those demanded extraordinary craftsmanship. And there was no way he could afford to spend too much time studying carving himself.
When that time came, he would want Meowth to take up that mantle.
...
"No — I have to keep a straight face."
Dark quickly schooled his expression.
This was not the moment for grinning. Meowth had just misbehaved, and Gatomon was still fuming. As head of the household, rewards and punishments had to be clearly distinguished.
Fortunately, the Armed card hadn't failed. Gatomon's hat was still in there.
And Meowth's bighead carp carving?
Also still in there.
Dark looked at the Armed card, thinking that Meowth's talent in this area really did outshine him by a wide margin.
On the face of the card, a vividly lifelike bighead carp was swimming lazily around the brim of the top hat — you'd never in a million years guess it had once been a block of wood.
The two carvings had merged together seamlessly, perfectly.
But this Armed card belonged to Gatomon, in the end.
Meowth had thrown its beloved little fish into the Mental Furnace — and was destined to get nothing back from it.
What on earth had it been after...?
Dark shook his head slightly, then channeled mana in and examined the Armed card in detail.
[Card Name: White Fish Hat]
[Type: Tool Card]
[Effect: Defense +63. Absorbs sunlight and converts it into mana.]
"A solar-powered mana-charging hat?"
Compared to the Wooden Armor's "attract moonlight" and the Moonlight Skirt's "increase charm," the White Fish Hat's "convert sunlight to mana" was on a completely different level — it was borderline broken.
Dark's eyelids gave a faint twitch.
What a wonderful surprise.
For a Magic Guide Spirit, there was no more useful effect imaginable than mana replenishment.
The only question was how efficient the sunlight-to-mana conversion actually was. Could it offset the Armed card's own drain? Could it go further and offset the Magic Guide Spirit's baseline mana loss?
If it could...
"Okay, that's probably wishful thinking."
"But it's at least a direction worth researching."
After dutifully writing up his notes, Dark turned toward Gatomon with a small, pleased smile.
He summoned the White Fish Hat and gently placed it on top of Gatomon's head.
Gatomon instinctively reached up to hold the brim, tilting her head slightly to look up at him — her eyes glistening.
"Meow!"
Up on the bookshelf, Meowth let out a disgruntled meow.
Its paws itched with the urge to leap down and snatch the hat. But after carefully weighing the power gap between itself and Gatomon, it slumped into a defeated sulk.
Gatomon, now in possession of the White Fish Hat, finally let her anger go. She didn't show off like Sylveon would have. She simply stood in front of the mirror for a moment, then settled down on the edge of the bed, cradling the hat and turning it over and over in her paws — unable to take her eyes off the little fish in particular.
Meowth, meanwhile, sat there gnashing its teeth.
Dark watched his Magic Guide Spirits' reactions and turned over in his mind how he ought to handle educating Meowth.
But as he thought, his gaze gradually drifted and fixed on the White Fish Hat.
A new idea suddenly flashed through his mind.
"The way Magic Guide Spirits use mana is essentially built around their Ultimate Moves. Without an Ultimate Move as a vehicle, they can't handle mana particularly well."
"Take Little Eevee — she can't even use a mana pen."
"But once they put on an Armed piece, even without actively controlling anything, the mana gets drawn away by the armament itself."
"If they pay close attention during that process, it shouldn't be too difficult for them to develop an awareness of mana..."
"And awareness comes before control."
"These simple Armed pieces might actually make for excellent teaching tools."
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